


Pen and Sword

by Lore55



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Culture Shock, Demons exist, Dothraki, Elia Martell Deserves Better, Elia Martell and Lyanna Stark were in love, Gen, Gratuitous reverences to other media, If these get good enough reception I might write actual stories, Industrial Revolution, Minor Angst, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Worldbuilding, most people deserve better, multiple OCs - Freeform, or at least a lot people live
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25835233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lore55/pseuds/Lore55
Summary: A dumping ground for all my half baked oc ideas.Feat;Cersei Lannister births a literal demon.Rhaenys Targaryen lives, becomes a magic blacksmith, and some how winds up Designated Stark Guardian.Dany finds a steampunk city in the middle of fuck-all-nowhere.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Elia Martell/Rhaegar Targaryen, Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	1. Lion of Night

_**In a desperate bid to thwart the destiny of her children, Cersei calls on an ancient and dark magic. One that twists her first child into an unnatural creature, crowned in darkness. Her Lion of the Night.** _

Only fools and the desperate would dare do as she did. Fool, or desperate, he wasn’t sure which she was, this pale woman who had carved the wooden box, broken her skin to feed it her blood, and filled it with bits of gold and bone. She had buried at the crossroads, two strokes past midnight. She wasn’t very clever. There were no iron chains or steel blades in sight, so he would bank on fool. 

He stepped out of the shadows, if only to watch her jump half into their air. Not so pale, up close. Light of skin but her hair shone of gold and her eyes shimmered green, emeralds in the night. Her gown was silk, cut, expensive, and very medieval. Good. It helped him place himself, and gave him forwarding to change from a suit and tie to a velvet lined tunic and a dark cape. How very droll. 

“You’re him, aren’t you?” The woman asked. Her head high, her eyes wide. Fear quivered the muscles in her throat but her jaw was set and her shoulders squared. 

_Yes,_ he thought, _certainly a fool._

“That would depend entirely on which ‘him’ you’re looking for. I am _a_ him, but I could be any him and you could still say ‘you’re him’. So which ‘him’ do you seek?”

A furrow marred her perfectly manicured brows, dragging them together. 

“I’m not here for riddles or tricks, I’ve had enough of those!” 

“Aye, that would be why you didn’t use honey bread and cream,” he drawled. He could only imagine what the fair folk would do with this mortal. She was in luck, really. He needed someone for a very particular task, and none of his underlings need know about this. 

Few of them interacted with this realm. Planatos was just one card in a deck of dimensions that his kind could be called to catter in, and for the most part he left it to the locals. This, however, was an opportunity. One that he needed. One that he jumped on, a summons that he stole before it could reach the eager ears of those waiting in their seven hells. 

One hand slipped into his pocket, closing around the smooth metal that lay within. Warmth flickered under his finger tips. Desperate, frightened. He stroked his thumb across it soothingly. 

“Very well, she who is not here for riddles and tricks. Tell me what you are here for.” 

He relished in the way she blustered briefly before she squared her shoulders. 

“A witch put a curse on me and I want it off!” 

He gave her a brief once over. “You aren’t cursed.” 

“She told me-” 

“Who, Lady? Speak swiftly, we don’t have all night.” He didn’t want to risk someone else noticing his presence here. Not when he carried such precious cargo. 

“Maggy the Frog! She took my blood and told me that my children would die.” 

“You have no children,” he spoke with as much patience as he could manage. “Tell me exactly what she said.” 

The woman, more a girl, really, ran her tongue across her teeth. 

“I asked her if I would marry the prince, and she said ‘Queen I shall be, until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast me down and take all that I hold dear’. After that I asked how many children we would have, and she said six-and-ten for him, and three for me. ‘Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds,’ she said,” the girl repeated, her voice growing horse and rough. “ “And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.” “ There were tears of anger now threatening her pretty green eyes. 

A hum worked its way through his chest. “Now that is _quite_ a prophecy for you. A queen you shall be, is it?” That, he could work with. “Very well.” Prophecies were difficult things to get around, and once they were set they usually come true. More often than not by those trying their hardest to stop them. On top of that, ‘Valonqar’ was a younger brother, wasn’t it? A dangerous thing, to have foreseen killing someone. 

He’d be willing to bet that she was already alienating her brother, so sure was she that he would bring her death. A foolish child, a silly mortal so caught up in her own tale she couldn't see that she was but one tiny, inconsequential thread in the end. 

It wasn’t the queen part that the girl had come to him for, no. It was her children. Her children, that she already felt so very protective of, when they were not yet so much as conceived. 

If he thought gods would smile on a creature like him, he would have sworn that they were doing so today. 

He always had had the devils own luck, so to speak. 

“Very well,” he said again. “ **Let’s make a deal.** ” 

His grin was sharp and his eyes flashed black as the night sky and red as a drowning sun. 

The girl took a step back and for a second he thought she would flee. Yet, she stepped forth to him, chin lifted and eyes sharp. 

From his pocket, he pulled out the necklace. The energy within flickered against his fingers again, searching, hoping. He ran his thumb across the surface again. Just a bit longer. 

Just a bit longer. 

He didn’t want to give it over, but he had no choice. This was the best option. The safest place. 

A court of kings and queens, in a world coming to its end. It was exactly where he should be and exactly where no one would look. 

He held the necklace out to her. 

Gold, with a tiny flicker of red beating inside like a pulse. 

“Wear this around your neck when you bed your-” he paused, head cocked as her sins surfaced on her skin before his eyes. Crawling like living things over and over. “Man. You will have four children instead of three.” 

“And the rest of it? Their crowns and their shrouds?” She reached tentatively for the pendant. 

“I’m sure their shrouds and crowns will be gold still, little lion woman, but you may not ever see them, should you follow my instructions.” 

Her fingers, long and delicate, reached out to brush the necklace before he pulled it an inch away. 

“There is, however, a price.” 

She frowned, a poor look on her beautiful face. “I’ll give you as much gold as you want, just give me the necklace!” 

“Gold? Lady, you aren’t dealing with a horse trader or a spicer,” he grinned wickedly, if only to see her squirm. “You’ve summoned a demon, and our payments come at much steeper prices. Something of value to you. Gold, from a rich woman is worth less than a pig from a poor farmer. No, no. Your price will not be gold.” 

She swallowed thickly, fear flickering through her and she started to draw away from him. 

“My soul?” she whispered, frightened. She held herself less like a lion and more like a deer, ready to spring into the forest and begone at the first signs of trouble. 

“No,” he let the pendant swing between them. A horrible, yawning ache echoed in the ribs of his vessel. He didn’t want to let it go, but he had to. Demons valued little more than their own skin, but this was worth more than his entire soul, the tattered, tainted remains of it. He could trust no one with it. Not even himself. 

“It will not cost you your soul,” it might cost her her heart, though. “Bewarned. Your child may come to be what you did not expect.” 

“It wouldn’t be a -a _dwarf_ , would it?” 

Now that was a curious, specific thing to ask. The raw disgust on her face was interesting too. 

“No,” he said with surety. “All of your young will be hale and healthy, with no curiosities of that sort.” A bit mad, perhaps. He could see ‘murder’ crawl across the bridge of her delicate nose and wondered who she’d killed ,and why. He didn’t bother asking. “Your price, lioness, will be your first born.” 

“I am not giving you my child!” she nearly screamed, viciously protective of young not even born. Oh yes, this vicious fool was perfect for him. 

“You would not _give_ me the child,” he said patiently. “You would _bear_ me a child. No intercourse required.” 

He watched the indecision war across her face. Sins danced over her high cheekbones. Still so young, she would one day be seeped in them. He could find no one more perfect for this task. 

The woman reached again and grasped the pendant tight in trembling fingers. There was a tiny scar on her thumb, black to his sight with witchcraft. He leaned forth and kissed her, once and briefly, the magic of the deal sealing them together and etching across her skin, blind to mortal eyes. 

“Tell me your name, little lioness.” 

“Cersei,” she looked straight into his eyes. “Cersei Lannister.” 

~

Cersei would learn, years and a war and a marriage later, what the man on the crossroads had meant. 

Her child may come to be what she did not expect, was true. She expected the golden haired little boy or girl, with the same eyes that she and Jaime shared. What she got was a boy, silent as the grave, but not still with death. He was eerily quiet, but when the midwife raised a hand to try and slap him into crying Cersei screamed and fought. The night hung quiet outside the windows, but inside all there had been was horrific wailing for hours. 

Jaime, who had stayed while Robert had fled to the woods to hunt and leave her to the bloody business of birth, swept across the room and stole the child away from the woman to give him back to Cersei. There was a question in his eyes, but he did not ask it, the same questions that she had as she laid her eyes upon the babe.

She had never allowed Robert inside of her, only ever Jaime. 

So how was her son black of hair? 

She ran shaking fingers through the damp, dark lock. Blood soaked the sheets, her face was pale with its loss and blotchy with her own tears while the child breathed his first. 

Pycelle, who was watching with far too little care, stood at the side Jaime did not occupy. 

“Your grace,” he said, acting a bit less like a doddering old fool. “You child, the prince. He needs a name.” 

Names, yes. He needed a name. She had thought long and hard on the names for her children, one for a boy and one for a girl, and here she was with one of each. 

“Joffrey. Joffrey for a boy,” she would have said, a slight against her husband. Joffrey for a Lannister and Joffrey for the Targaryen’s that he hated so much. 

The words fell naturally from her lips but they were wrong. Joffrey for the boy and Cerissa for the girl, yet the name that fell was one that she had never heard before. 

_Your child may come to be what you did not expect._

“Lyonidas.” The name sits heavy on her chest, where the children rest. Where the pendant she had traded her son for rested between her breasts. Ever since she had obtained it it had felt warm to her skin and thrummed under her fingers like a living thing. Now it rested against her, cold and still and lighter than it had been. It felt empty. 

Cersei looked down at her child. Not a golden lion, but a lion with shadows crowned his head. 

She wondered, for the first time, what she had done. 

What fate has she wrought herself and her child?


	2. Haven

**_Albealion, they called the great city domed in darkness. Built by black fire and filled up by horrors of monsters, witches, and curses, few men dared draw near. Dany was no man._ **

* * *

Danaerys stood at the edges of her small Khalaser. She had lost track of how long they had been wandering the Red Waste, how far they had travelled, and how many of them had died. They trailed the red path of the comet that heralded the birth of her dragons and the death of her husband, child, and the Maegi Mirri Mazz Durr. 

They travelled by night, and hid in their tents during the day, avoiding the harsh daylight beating down upon them. They were low on water, and they had run out of food days ago. Her people hungered and so, too, did she. 

For the first time in days it was not her hunger that occupied her thoughts. Off in the distance, she could see something rising out of the waste. 

“Ser Jorah,” she called, and at once the knight appeared at her side. Her first Queensguard, he stood tall at her side, looking out over the red that stretched with the dawn. “Do you see that?” she had to make sure. The desert liked to play tricks on the eyes, and she had to know if he was seeing what she thought she saw. 

Something vast and dark, unnoticeable in the shadows of the night. 

“I do,” Ser Jorah told her, and Irri appeared at her other side as well with her Hrakkar skin cloak, to protect her from the rising sun. When she laid her almond eyes on the shadow on the horizon she hissed a curse in the Dothraki tongue. 

“Vaes Kazga,” Irri called it. “A curse on men. We must not go near it, Khaleesi.”

“Why?” Dany asked. “What is so bad about this place?” Vaes Kazga. The Black City. 

“It is called  _ Albiaelion  _ by traders,” Ser Jorah told her. The Valyrian fell strange from his mouth.“It is said it sprung up overnight. A city built by black fire, inhabited by strange lights and unearthly sounds. No man that enters ever returns.” 

“I’ve met a woman from Albia Elion,” Doreah said, suddenly at Dany’s elbow. “They send out three or four of them every year, to Slavers bay and the free cities, then they march all the slaves that they buy back to their great black city and they never come out again.” 

“What do they do with them there?” Dany asked. No one had an answer. No one had an answer, but if there was a city but there must be water. Their Khalaser wouldn’t last much longer without supplies, and there was no other city for miles and miles. 

“Irri,” Dany said, “Ready my horse.” 

“We must not go to that place, Khaleesi,” Irri insisted, more frantically now. “It is full of demons and dark magics. Great monsters live inside that city, Khaleesi. It is known.” 

“How can it be known if no one has ever returned?” Dany asked. “Irri, my silver.” 

Whatever that city was, she needed to see it. She had to take the chance, and the comet they had been following into the Red Waste lead just past the top of the black city. Vaes Kazga. Albiaelion. The Black City. The Shining Place. 

Dany rode with her bloodriders behind her and Ser Jorah at her side. They reached the city by the time the sun was three fingers in the sky. By the time she stood before the cities walls she realized why it had its name. 

Tall walls, easily higher than the great stone horses that crossed the entrance of Vaes Dothrak, lifted into the air. They towered into the sky above her head, glittering pitch black. When Dany drew closer she could see her own reflection staring back at her, the white lion draped across her head. She had grown gaunt and thin in the harsh desert and the girl that stared back at her looked savage and wild, stride atop her silver. 

The city was domed in black glass that was impossible to see through. She could see where it was joined in triangle, over and over and over again, until they arched away into the sky. A shiver ran down her spine when she recalled Irri’s words. Demons and dark magics. 

_ But,  _ she reminded herself,  _ Ser Jorah said it was built by black fire. I am the Unburnt. The Mother of Dragons. I am not afraid of fire _ . 

Dany and her four warriors circled the whole city until they came upon their own tracks in the sand, but they found no gate. No way in and no way out. The great dome was so vast that by the time they had found their way around it half the day had passed. When they came across their hoofprints there was a young man standing where they had begun, as if he had emerged from the desert itself. He wore simple clothes, black cotton pants and a red shirt that folded over the right breast. The only decoration to him was a single brass pin on his shoulder, showing a shield crossed with a sword. To match it, a short sword was strapped to his belt. 

His hair was thick and brown, and curving tattooed spread across the left side of his face like honeycomb. 

Dany and her warriors drew to a halt in front of the boy. Dany lifted her head, hoping to look half as fierce as her reflection did, dwarfed in the white pelt. 

In the common tongue, she asked, “What is your name, ser?” He couldn't be older than she was by more than a few years. Sixteen, seventeen perhaps, still young. 

“Miss,” he said in Dothraki, “There is nothing for you here. You should be on your way. Leave the red waste while you can.” 

Rakharo drew up at his insufficient address, but Dany held a hand to stay his blade. 

“I am Danaerys, of house Targeryen. Khaleesi of the Great Grass Seas. I would speak to your leader.” 

The boy rocked on his boots, uncertainty flickering across his face. 

“I doubt that, Khaleesi. Our leader is very busy.” 

“Never the less, I would speak to him,” she said. Something about her words must have amused him, for the boy smiled. 

“Very well, Danaerys of house Targeryen. I warn you not to get your hopes up.” 

He turned from her and walked up the great glass wall. Dany wondered if it were struck would it shatter like regular glass, or stand hard like the great black walls of Volantis. The boy walked up to one of the triangles and walked through the gap between one and the next, disappearing into the blackness. Jhogo’s horse snorted violently but Dany’s silver was undisturbed by the boys disappearance. 

They waited outside. The sun crested the top of the shining city and started to beat again on Dany’s shoulders, heating her under the pale pelt that protected her. She saw Ser Jorah reach for his empty waterskin before stopping himself. The sun ticked by until at last the boy stepped back out through the door, followed by a young man in his twenties. 

The man was tall, and his hair was as dark as his eyes. He walked with confidence and grace, though he too wore clothes that were rather plain. Black trousers, and a black shirt with little more than a yellow sash to distinguish him. There was another pin on his shoulder,this one a simple gold circle. 

Dany grew irritated and confused. Neither of these men bore the confidence of a ruler, and they certainly didn’t strike her as sorcerers who lived inside of black glass walls. 

“You are Danaerys Targaryen?” the new comer asked, walking towards her. He spoke swiftly and stiffly. Dany nodded, once. She noted the marks around his throat, a line of tattoos of the sun, glittering gold in the sunlight. 

“I am.” 

“Why are you here, Danaerys Targaryen?” the man asked, looking around her to see her bloodriders and the knight. 

“We seek to trade with you,” she said slowly. She couldn’t let them know exactly how weak her Khalaser had grown, or how few they were. Wise men closed their gates to the Dothraki and showered them with peace offerings and gifts. 

“Yet you have nothing to trade,” the man said, “We know who you are, Danaerys Targaryen. You are the Unburnt. The Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Queen of however many lands you command,” he flipped his fingers at her. “But you have nothing to trade save a dying Khaalaser.” 

Dany bristled under his dismissal. “I am a queen, and a Khaleesi. Who are you?” 

The man flashed her a smile that glittered with metal bound across his straight teeth. Each tooth was accompanied by a square, wired to each other near delicately. 

“I am Marqelo Rhodes, King-in-Waiting of this fair city.” 

King-in-Waiting. Dany could only assume that was something like a prince. She fought to keep her composure. They needed this. Before she could say anything else, Marqelo went on. 

“You are welcome to come into our city. We will feed and water your people, and you need not trade us anything.” 

She could hear the ‘but’ coming. 

“However. Once you step foot in our city, you may never leave so long as it stands.” 

“Absolutely not!” She couldn't do that to her people. Gods only knew what waited behind the walls, and she would not trade away their freedom to whatever the fate of the slaves was in Albiealion. 

“Then you have to trade. Gold, silver, coppers. Or, something more valuable.” His dark eyes glinted. 

“You will not take my dragons!” 

“No,” he said swiftly, “No, we have no interest in  _ taking  _ your dragons, Khaleesi. We only wish to see them. You may stay the entire time, and we will do it outside, here, if you wish. In return, we will share with you food, water, and supplies, and send you on your way. One of our Retrievers is bound for Qarthe in a week. She will guide your people there.” 

“Who is ‘we’?” she asked suspiciously. 

“Scholars,” he said dismissively, in the way that men did when they didn’t want her to know all that they were after. 

Yet, what choice did she have? If she did not agree her people would die. She would die. Her dragons might die. 

No. 

The gods had taken her brothers, her husband, her son. They would  _ not  _ take her dragons. 

“So be it,” Dany said, and sealed their fate. 

Dany, her bloodriders, and her Queensguard returned to the encampment, where unease had stirred in wake of their leave, and in the time it took them to return. It was dangerous, what they had done. Marching to a cursed city. Yet, when they returned, the relief was palpable. Her people gathered around Dany, the old and the sick and the young boys without braids. 

She gave the order and, though Irri looked pale under her darkened skin and the whispers haunted the camp, they obeyed. Her word was their law, ever since she had emerged from the fire’s unharmed. Mother of Dragons. The Unburnt. 

_ Breaker of Chains.  _

What had Marqelo Rhodes meant when he called her that? She had broken no chains at all. Danaerys helped Irri and Dorthea pack up her tent, stowing what fit into their packs and loading them onto the animals. If this went poorly, she wanted to be ready to escape with her people while she could. She did not trust these strange folk in their black domed city. .

They arrived back at the black city with just enough time to set a camp. What they found was a pack of young men and women, all dressed like the first two had been. Almost all of them had some kind of tattoos across their faces. Blooming flowers and sparking flames, crested moons and waves dancing. They had carts of food, water, and supplies set out and waiting. 

Dany made her way to the front, where Marqelo Rhodes stood with two women, one young , dark, hard bodied and so stern Dany nearly mistook her for a man. Flowers bloom across the left half of her face. The other is tall, graceful, and pale. 

“Marqelo,” Dany greeted. Her lilac eyes darted across everyone else present, weary and searching for threats. None of them were armed, and none looked interested in fighting. All eyes were on her. 

“Danaerys. You’ve brought your dragons?” 

“I have,” Dany motioned behind her. Irri and Doreah brought the baskets that her dragos rode in forwards. Drogon screeched at the new comers. Dany got to see their eyes alight with wonder. 

It was the woman, perhaps twice Dany’s age, who stepped forwards first. Before even the King-In-Waiting. She was tall, Dany noted, with red folded into her pale hair where it was held back in a tight knot. When she grinned it was a sunny thing, with none of the knife sharp smiles of the people who sought to curry favor with the remaining Targaryen. Dany had seen many in her life, wandering with Viserys. Her brother had bought their honeyed words and never doubted their loyalty. 

Dany now knows, Loyalty is a fragile thing. Words mean little. 

But this woman does not smile with any sharp knives for teeth. 

“Beautiful,” she says instead, and pulls a small bag from around her shoulder. Dany watches wearily as she opens it up and pulls from inside a wrap of thick cloth that steams faintly in the lowering sunlight. She unwraps it, and holds up a hunk of cooked meat. 

Viserion’s neck snakes through the thin wooden bars of his basket faster than his brothers and snatches a chunk away. Drogon steals more than half of what remains and Rhaegal finishes it just as fast. 

_ How had she known Dragons eat cooked meat?  _

“Who are you?” Dany asks sharply, trying to look like an imposing queen and Khaleesi when she barely comes up to the woman’s chest. 

“Lynn,” the woman, Lynn, says absently. 

Marqelo speaks up behind her, looking patiently amused while she is overcome by the dragons. 

“The Queen of Geltigon ,” he says. Dany looks at her with new eyes, wanting to drag her tone back into her mouth. She could have offended the person who was to supply her people and save them. 

Lynn doesn’t seem even remotely concerned. 

She, like Marqelo, has a gold broach in the shape of a simple circle fastened at her breast. There is no crown, no grand gowns or heavy jewelry. Both of her ears are pierced through with black gem stones that Dany things might be obsidian. Her clothes are well made but still plain, and she wears the same black trousers as the men. Her sash is red, and the pack on her back has more pockets than Dany would know what do with. 

Just who is this woman, this Queen that would look upon her dragons? 

Dany helps Irri free Viserion. He is the smallest of her dragons, pale cream in color and accented in gold. Lynn bounces on the balls of her feet, her thick boots scuffing the red dirt. She looks as giddy as a child getting a sweet. 

Someone appears with a long table that folds out for them, and stools that cross at the legs with cloth to support whoever sits. Food and water is distributed to her people by those of Albielion. Marqelo had called it Geltigon. Why? 

Dany asks, after she’s torn herself away from a sweat pear. 

“That’s it’s real name,” says Lynn, who has managed to bribe Viserion into staying still long enough for her to measure the span of his wings. She had, only minutes before, risked her finger to tease him into opening his mouth so she could poke at the back of it with a thin rod. Each torment he endured, she fed him again. 

_ At this rate, he’ll grow heavier than I am.  _

It wouldn't be a hard accomplishment. Dany and her people are all bony and thin now. 

“It’s High Valyrian,” she adds, finally looking up at Dany. Her eyes are a dark blue, nearly violet in the dampening sun. 

“Yes,” Dany knows the word. “Geltigon. ‘Cover’. Sometimes shield.” A city covered in black glass. She can see where it received all of its names. A Shining Place. The Black City. Shield. 

“It’s only because I was naming her, I didn’t know the Valyrian word for ‘Haven’,” says the Queen. Queen and founder? She is young. She cannot be older than thirty, if that. Not even twice as old as Dany, and Dany is only sixteen herself. 

“A haven, or a safe place, would be ȳghalion,” Dany finds herself telling this strange woman. 

Lynn shoots Dany a winning smile. “Clever girl! I haven’t the head for languages,” she confesses. Dany wonders if Queens are supposed to be so open with faults and not knowing things. She’s fairly certain that the answer is ‘no’. 

Yet, no one around them seems to mind Lynn, or her lack of proper Queenly manners. 

What sort of place lies beyond these black walls? 

A boy walks by in a cap. He’s hard bodied with skin as dark Danaerys’ is light. His hair is stuck up in a cap. Nothing about him is terribly remarkable, besides that he has a gold circle pinned to his breast. Dany almost mistakes him again. It’s the girl from before, with the flower tattoos, who had stood silently beside King-in-Waiting and Queen. Who is she? 

“You have no crown,” Dany says at length. There’s a question in her voice. Lynn looks up, her pale brows furrowed. 

“Those things? A waste of resources. Gold is spent on better things than my pretty head,” she jests, shooting Dany a grin. She pulls her fingers back just in time to keep them. Viserion’s teeth click on nothing but air. “Besides, I’m not that kind of Queen.”

_ Then what kind of queen are you?!  _

“Then how will they know you’re the Queen?” Dany asks. Her mother had a crown. She doesn’t remember it well, but she remembers it was one of the few things that brought her brother joy. When they were forced to sell it, all of his happiness left him at last. 

“How do you know you are?” Lynn fires back. Dany draws herself up, and Irri at her side frowns. Lynn raises her hands. “Don’t take offense, Khaleesi. You ask how they know I am Queen when I have no crown? Yet you have no more a crown than I, and these people follow you into the Red Waste. Only fools come out here. Fools and the desperate.” 

“Which of these things are you?” Dany cannot bite her tongue. She should. 

Lynn finds no insult in her. Strange woman, unconcerned with slights and the cares of a little girl in a lion skin. She bids Viserion press his paw in soft clay before she respond to Dany. 

“A fool if you ask anyone who knew me when I first dreamed up this place,” Lynn says as absently as she says everything else. The words of man mean less to her than the scales of a dragon. 

The sun sets properly, and fires light around her small Khalaser. 

“We must retired,” says Marqelo, nudging the queen. He looks Dany’s age. Can he really be Lynn’s son? If he is their prince, she must be his mother. “We will return in the morning with more food for you, and new carts. Some of yours are barely held together.” 

“Duct tape and hope,” Lynn says with a soft shake of her head. At last she lets Viserion go. He tolerated her more than anyone who is not Dany or Irri. “He’s not wrong. We need to close up. I’ll see you on the morrow, Dragonmother.” 

She takes Dany’s hand in her and gives it a firm shake up and down. 

Marqelo waves above his head and their retinue leaves her people. In minutes they have vanished between panes of black glass, into the land beyond. 

This close, Dany can see what Irri had meant. There are lights that blur and float inside the dark glass. Some at eye level. Some so far into the sky that Dany has to wonder if they don’t have wings hidden beneath their strange clothes. 

Jorah Mormont appears at her side. 

“Your Grace?” he searches her face for something. 

Dany collects Viserion off the table. 

“Let us retire as well, Ser. We will need our energy tomorrow.” She can feel it. 


End file.
